Nurgle General on Trike

After trying a Khorne General on Moloch a few times and hitting myself with a '1' on the daemon weapon roll quite reliably, I wanted something else. Following a tip from a Games Workshop salesman, I looked into making a Nurgle themed General on a Bike with some Chaos Bikers as escort.

I already had a couple of bikers which were only drybrushed with Leadbelcher, but for this I decided to throw the Dark Angel bikers from the starter box into the blender and use some virigin chaos bikers for the escort.

Just behind the driver's back, I sawed througth the DA bikers diagonally. I discarded one front. From the other front I removed the biker torso and clipped the wings to stubs I could mount my custom front shield on. Obviously I also scraped off any iconography of the false emperor and his foolish minions. The rear bike halves I put next to each other and bridged the gap between them with a few plasticard rectangles. I also used plasticard to close what I had sawed open to the front and some more plates to cover the wheel housing.

 

Some cut-down spikes from the Chaos vehicle decoration frame sits next to the plasticard on the rear wheel housing. I also used it to cover a gap behind the driver. An oil drum which I had flying around was dropped inbetween the rear wheels.

Basing myself on the shape of the front armor of the regular chaos bikes, I cut something bigger out of plasticard and gave it a border and nurgle irons before gluing it to the wing-stubs.

I used a Warhammer Fantasy Battle chaos lord for the torso of my model. This meant some sawing, filing and filling in with green stuff, but I like the overall result. The right arm and the head are from a chaos spawn plastic kit. I know the fly head looks weird, but with a fly being used as icon for Nurgle, I thought it fitting.

One Nurgling is surfing on the drum, two others are just chilling.

The drum with the surfer glued to it and the two Nurglings are fixed in place with magnets to avoid contortions while painting. They can also be used as hit-point counter. I also attached the power fist with magnets and slipped a few small ones into the base of the wheels. I like to transport my models on a metal sheet in a box and didn't want to slap the trike on a base.

This picture shows the mini completely assembled before priming. The drum (it's from a Tamiya kit I think) got a chaos star and the trike got a towing hook. The nuts around it come from two cultist improvised close combat weapons cut into pieces.

After I primed the models, I got medieval on them using a Dremel. Even though I don't like mold lines anymore than the next guy, I wanted to do some serious damage to the surfaces of the model for the final look. Rather than elaborately paint that, I figured just mess up the surfaces and use shade. Since the Dremel marks were looking a bit too sharp, I covered them with plastic glue which melted them down nicely.

Here are the General, his escort and a hexer I built from the remaining Dark Angel bike in a group shot. I made the mistake of putting the plasma weapons into the hands of the escort bikers rather than chuck them into the bike. Since they replace either the bike's syncro bolter or the biker's close combat weapon, that costs a bonus attack. I've fixed this later. Since the weapons were magnet mounted, that was no big issue.

Finally, here a shot of the General from all sides. Standard Citadel paints were used, except for Tamiya Clear Red for the open wounds.

The General gets an Energy Claw and an Energy Fist, allowing the choice between a faster or a harder hit and granting a bonus attack for two special weapons. The bike grants toughness 5, which gets upped to toughness 6 by the Mark of Nurgle. That is pretty sweet. He doesn't have feel no pain and only has three wounds, but is still a pretty cheap, yet fast and tough HQ.

***************  1 HQ *************** 
Chaosgeneral, Mark of Nurgle, Veteran of the Long War
+ 1 x Energyweapon, 1 x Energyfist  -> 40 Pkt.
+ Sigil of Corruption, Chaosbike  -> 45 Pkt.
 - - - > 170 Points

Adding five chaos bikers with toughness 6 all around, a power fist on the champ and two plasma weapons is just 200 points. Of course one can roll with just three if that is too dear.